Search Archives

The Starting Right Guard

August 29th, 2014

Lovie Smith weighs in

Well, that sieve of an offensive line sure got fixed in a hurry, didn’t it? With the trade for Logan Mankins, it is clear who will be the starting left guard when the Bucs host the Stinking Panthers a week from Sunday.

But what about right guard? Some believe Patrick Omameh is the default starter. He couldn’t be worse than Oneil Cousins, could he?

Before knighting Omameh as the starting right tackle, Bucs coach Lovie Smith is throwing up the caution flag. He isn’t quite ready to hand the job to Omameh.

“It’s a little early for that [to call him the starter at right guard],” Lovie said last night. “What we wanted to do was give him a lot of opportunities. We’ve done that. We’ve seen steady improvement from him, like we’ve seen from some of the other guards at the position. We have a group of men that we have to choose from.”

Perhaps the stalling in proclaiming a starter at right guard is so newcomer Rishaw Johnson from the Chiefs can master the playbook. It’s not as easy as it sounds.

Yesterday, when Mankins met with the local pen and mic club, he confessed he didn’t know how to learn the playbook in a week. Same could likely be said for the newly-acquired Johnson — that he doesn’t know the playbook well enough to take advantage of a starting opportunity.

i think you’ve got to give the nod to Rishaw Johnson after a few more weeks of learning the play book. Just watching him last night he clearly has better technique, but will need time to gel with the starting unit and learn the scheme.

The coaches will be able to determine which guard is best suited from the physical play of each individual. There will be missed assignments from the entire line due to EVERYONE working with a new playbook. I imagine much will be blamed on the guards as they are the newest but they are all working a new system with new people beside them. Now they have the physical players they need but I still expect this to take a few weeks to become a dominant line. They should hold their own in the start of the season and just continue to get better each week but expect a few miscues simply due to everything is NEW.
The real question is can the coaches call the correct plays that the offense line can handle as they progress each week.

stone face and lazer light waited wy to long to address this situation after blowing up our o line this year hey but good job a hole now it will take more than a week for mankins and rickhaw you doesn’t have to call me Johnson to get tis right. im going to take out a policy on mcnone and his backup the stork good luck to yall fans of these clowns better call in the bully just in case hey but he will keep it on the low low kinda incognito I guess maybe down the line we will get real coach and real qb reall offense and real team after 30 plus freakingyears tired disgusted and over this organization go jags

Good riddance, James West. But before you go, I have to ask: why the single period in the middle? You took a perfectly good run-on sentence, completely free of any grammar or logic, and RUINED it with a single punctuation. So inconsistent. Disappointing, really.

Yeah, this team is much better off without Incognito pshh. Seeing is believing Joe, and we have only seen a mess from any of the guys who will be starting right guard week 1. You can paint a pretty picture about the development all you want, but D lines like the ones Carolina and St Louis are licking their chops for such a situation.

It is time now for the coaching staff to stop plugging in different people and make a clear decision on who is playing the offensive line. They have the people so it is time to make the call and let them start playing together as a unit.
A basketball coach doesnt pull a player because he missed one shot and a lineman cant be looking over his shoulder at the coach when something doesnt go right. Lovie needs to take the reins here and step up and say I have my line and I stand behind them. He should also say he realizes that there will be miscues but it will be worked out. The lineman need to know that the coach is confident in them to get all these new things worked out.
It is not their fault that the coaches took so long to put the line together and they are all tryin very hard. Stand Up Lovie – some of this line weakness is your fault.

opening day will probably be 2 of the starting gaurds from preseason. get ready for it. I highly doubt mankins will be ready in a week….and if they put him out there he’s bound to miss some assignments, and get some people clobbered.

pick your poison week one. as for ritchie, if they do he won’t be ready for a few weeks in as they’ll wait till the season starts too sign him. so get ready for some ugly OL play for at least a few weeks and pray we can save at least a win or two. hopefully we can go 2-2 until the unit gels

It may just be me, but I thought Rishaw Johnson was solid last night. He went in at RG on the 2nd series and played the whole game. With the disclaimer that he may have been playing against next weeks UPS drivers and insurance salesmen, I made the following observations:

1. On running plays, unlike Cousins (at all) and Omameh (a great deal of the time), Johnson actually hit what appeared to be the correct guy based on where the play went;

2. When he hit his guy, they appeared to go BACKWARDS!… Kinda of like real-life NFL offensive linemen do:

3. When he hit what appeared to be the correct guy and they went back…he sustained his block:

4. On passing plays, when his guy went to one side or the other… (are you all sitting down?)… he did not lean over, try to grab them as they went by…. he moved his feet and got in front of them! Genius!…and after he moved in front of them…. he punched the defender in the chest with both hands… looking remarkably like pass blocking..

5. Exhibited the nasty streak we’ve heard so much about this week when Stocker was hit after the play and he went right after the guy who hit Stocker from behind.

Omameh..please take notes, your career is still salvagable… Cousins, go back to your coloring book.

Look, all sarcasm aside, and fully understanding he may have been blocking a beer truck driver, Rishaw Johnson at least LOOKED like he knew what he was doing, and in my opinion, deserves a shot at starting RG for week 1. If he stinks it up and Incognito is the best option there, then the Bucs make the move for him so his salary is not guaranteed.

Did somebody clone Tony Dungy? Lovie sounds almost exactly like Dungy when he speaks. We got another all defense, little offense coach. These two coaches are near mirror images of each other. Back to the future.

I heard if they sign Richie after week 1 it’s not GARUNTEED money. Licht also said last night that there are penalty of more moves that can be made. Did I hear licht correctly when he said he was impressed by Richie and frankly enjoyed the meeting? The more I hear about Richie the more I find that the only people who don’t like him are Martin and the pen and mic club.

Rishaw out played cousins. Not hard to do. Lansanga might have stolen cassillas starting spot. Patton looked better as a rvc than a returner last night. Kafka looked really really good against wash third team.

Finally, Jeff demps, smh. Watching demps run up the middle is like watching someone go off-roading in a lambo. Demps needs to be used like Percy Harvin but apparently he can’t catch. And Dri Archer is the fastest man in football lets get that straight. Wanted Dri Archer but he’s too small and will get hurt, ohh the irony.

No lovie looks exactly like an older verison of Raheem Morris at the podium. And can somebody get that man some black slacks? Those kahkis and those uniforms are hideous. I swear the uni’s are going to give me a seizure.

@ James west
At some point in that rambling you mentioned 30 years of this? We were a very good team in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. You prob were in full time grammar school during those years though.

I focused in on Johnson on numerous plays and watched just him until the whistle. He looked good. He gave up what looked like two pressures, but other than that he had quick feet, good strength, balance and technique. His worst play was near the end of the game where he allowed the DT to put a swim move on him and get into the backfield immediately, but his technique to recover somewhat and make sure that his guy was not first to the QB was pretty decent. He looks athletic. I think he eventually wins the RG spot this season.

yup, the solution is clearly to bring in another guy with no experience in this team with this system, whose fat bottom has not played a down of football (live or practice) in 10 months. that’s the way to address the continuity\learning curve issues in our current batch of potential starting RGs